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Wine & Soul was founded in 2001 by husband and wife Sandra Tavares da Silva and Jorge Serodio Borges in Portugal’s Pinhão Valley. The couple were already esteemed winemakers; Sandra makes wine at Vale Dona Maria and at her family’s Quinta de Chocapalha estate, while Jorge used to work as a winemaker at Niepoort. The couple purchased an old historic port lodge and began buying top quality fruit from Pinhão Valley until 2003 when they acquired their own vineyard planted with 76-year old vines. Their prized 2-hectare vineyard is planted with 30 different local varieties which requires an exceptional level of skill to manage due to their different maturation periods and requirements. Over the years they have also added other vineyards including the magnificent Quinta da Manoella. Pintas is their flagship wine, a single vineyard bottling crafted from the exceptional Pintas vineyard which is planted with 80 year old vines of 35 different varieties. The wine is made as a field blend with the grapes carefully selected and trodden by foot in old stone lagares or troughs. The young wine ages for 22 months in French oak barrels. This creates a rich and incredibly complex red wine with intense notes of cassis, black cherry and blackberry seasoned with spice and dried herbs. Full bodied and well-rounded on the palate, this is a great wine to keep in the cellar for a few more years or savour with hearty red meat dishes.
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Creating wines that express the full character of old vines and indigenous grape varieties from the Douro, seeking balance between concentration, complexity, and elegance” is the great objective of the winemaking couple Sandra Tavares da Silva and Jorge Serôdio Borges, who have been investing in old vines and properties in the Rio Pinhão valley since 2001. This is where Manoella Tinto is born, at Quinta da Manoella, a historic property owned by the family for 5 generations.
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As you would expect, in the greatest of vintages, our Finn bottling naturally rises to the top. It’s a wine that will be lovely this winter but even better in five years, then at its apogee in eight to ten. Just as the wine expresses these vineyards’ two distinct soil types: silty/sandy and clay/loam, so too the wine shows the dual sides of local Pinot Noir: bright and effusive balancing and offsetting deep and expansive. It’s most similar in style and quality to 2018 and 2014, our two finest prior efforts. This is one of those wines that we don’t need to dissect or over-analyze, let’s just enjoy it for the sheer quality and pleasure it offers.
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Our 2021 vintage of “Wester Reach” Chardonnay is a multi-layered interpretation of this classic region where we live and farm. It includes some of the greatest sites in the appellation—vineyards that we have planted, farmed, and harvested for over twenty years. Comprising in three of our region’s unique sub-districts, the wine blends fruit from the valley itself with vineyards further west, stretching out to the coolest ‘reaches’ of the appellation’s high elevation coastal ridges. Each district contributes something unique, be it valley-floor richness, ridgeline density or coastal vibrancy.
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Herdade dos Grous -Alentejo, Portugal’s largest province holds the traditional Portuguese charm and a Moorish heritage, which can be seen in all its architecture. Its continental climate with Mediterranean influences, offers ideal conditions for the production of fantastic wines and extremely high quality regional products.
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Quinta das Carvalhas is the most emblematic and spectacular property in the Douro Valley. Written references regarding this magnificent vineyard can be traced back to 1759. Enjoying a prominent position on the left bank of the Douro river, in Pinhão, the estate covers the entire hillside facing the Douro river and occupies part of the slopes of the right bank of the tributary Torto river. Originating from selected parcels of centennary vines at Quinta das Carvalhas, the Carvalhas Vinhas Velhas is the very best that we can make at Real Companhia Velha. The result, is a superb Douro red, which not only expresses the singularity of this estate and its north facing vineyards, but also reflects on Douro’s history, due to the vast diversity of varieties present in the parcels of old vines. The Carvalhas extracts from these vines the power and concentration and from its sun exposure the freshness and balance. A wine that will certainly offer great character after ageing few decades in bottle. Pair it with Wild Boar, Rib-Eye, Phaesent or other gamaey food
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This wine comes from the very poor granit wineyard of Saint Hippolyte. The terroir is made of the degradation of the grey granit of Thannenkirch, light, white, sandy, poor and extremely dry, similar foind in the Cote Des Nuits. The growing of the vine is limited, and it must invest quickly in the maturation of the fruits. This is why this wineyard is one of the first ever planted in Alsace.
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Domaine Sérafin estate includes vineyard holdings in Gevrey-Chambertin, Morey-St.-Denis, and Chambolle-Musigny. His prized Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru plot occupies a mere 0.31 hectares with vines planted in 1946. The domaine is now run by cousins Frédérique and Karine who are continuing the family tradition of making bold and structured wines. Their Pinots benefit from a period of bottle age and typically express fine tertiary characteristics. They do not fine or filter their wines, and only rack when necessary. Not shy of new oak, they use up to 50% on their straight Bourgogne and often 100% on the rest of their cuvées depending on the concentration. The wines tend to be ample and fleshy, and the richest ones need some cellaring in order to better integrate the spicy, cedarwood flavours.